World News - ANALYSIS-US pressure on Iraq to pass key laws may backfire

U.S. pressure on Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki to speed up reconciliation among warring sects could backfire as Iraqi leaders don't want to be seen as taking orders from an increasingly impatient Washington. U.S. commanders leading a Baghdad crackdown aimed at giving Maliki time to pass power-sharing laws refer to a Washington clock and a Baghdad clock ticking at different speeds. General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, summed up the dilemma on Thursday when he spoke of an American clock "moving at a rapid rate of speed that reflects the frustration, impatience, disappointment, anger and a variety of other emotions" and a Baghdad clock "not moving as rapidly". With President George W. Bush under mounting pressure from Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Washington is tightening the screws on Maliki to deliver laws on sharing Iraq's oil wealth and rolling back a ban on members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from office by September.... http://www.alertnet.org

By a large margin, Americans feel the Bush administration has tipped the balance of security against liberty too far towards security, a new UPI/Zogby polls shows. But the public remains closely divided on the president's most controversial security programs, favoring by small margins warrantless wiretaps against terror suspects and the broad mining by federal agencies of personal data about U.S. citizens. When asked whether the Bush administration had "found the right balance between personal security and personal freedom," only one-third (33 percent) agreed. Nearly half (49 percent) agreed instead that the "administration has tipped the balance too far towards security." Only 7 percent agreed with the third option, that the balance was tipped "too far towards freedom, leaving our security weak."...http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Poll_Shows_Security_Imbalance_In_US_999.html

A New York state trooper who was thought to have been shot and killed by an escaped convict this week is now believed to have been killed by friendly fire, authorities announced Friday. Trooper David C. Brinkerhoff is thought to have been fatally shot by a fellow trooper while trying to arrest Travis Trim, 23, during a shootout in Trim's upstate Margaretville home Wednesday afternoon. Brinkerhoff was shot twice -- first in his protective armor by Trim, and then by another state trooper, New York State Police Superintendent Preston Felton said. "The fatal wound to the trooper was made by a .223 [caliber] tactical round. This round is believed to have been fired by an MRT [Mobile Response Team] team member," Felton said. "While it is clear that something went wrong, nothing can ever detract from the bravery and dedication of the men who entered that house in Margaretville," he added...http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/27/troopers.shot/index.html?eref=rss_us

Cocaine prices in the United States have dropped and the drug's purity increased, despite years of effort and nearly $5 billion spent by the U.S. government to combat Colombia's drug industry, the White House drug czar acknowledged in a letter to a key senator. The drug czar, John Walters, wrote Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that retail cocaine prices fell by 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per gram of pure cocaine — hovering near the same levels since the early 1990s. In 1981, when the U.S. government began collecting data, a gram of pure cocaine fetched $600. The purity of this cocaine, meanwhile, has “trended somewhat toward former levels,” as well, Walters said in the letter, citing data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Colombia supplies 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States. Declining prices and rising purity could also suggest weakening demand, but several household and school-based surveys show that ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/27/national/main2737916.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._2737916

An active-duty Army officer is publishing a blistering attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there. "America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq," charges Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, an Iraq veteran who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "The intellectual and moral failures . . . constitute a crisis in American generals." Yingling's comments are especially striking because his unit's performance in securing the northwestern Iraqi city of Tall Afar was cited by President Bush in a March 2006 speech and provided the model for the new security plan underway in Baghdad. He also holds a high profile for a lieutenant colonel: He attended the Army's elite School for Advanced Military Studies and has written for one of the Army's top professional journals, Military Review. The article, "General Failure," is to be published today in Armed Forces Journal. Its appearance signals the ...http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602230.html?referrer=emailarticle

A British soldier has broken ranks within days of returning from Iraq to speak publicly of the horror of his tour of duty there, painting a picture of troops under siege, "sitting ducks" to an increasingly sophisticated insurgency. "Basra is lost, they are in control now. It's a full-scale riot and the Government are just trying to save face," said Private Paul Barton. The 27-year-old, who returned from his second tour of Iraq this week along with other members of 1st Battalion, the Staffordshire Regiment, insisted that he remains loyal to the Army despite such public dissent. He said he had already volunteered to go to Afghanistan later this year. But, he said, he felt strongly that somebody had to speak out: "I want people to see it as it is; not the sugar-coated version." His public protest is a sign of the groundswell of anger among the troops, and predictions that more will come forward to break the traditional covenant of silent service. ...http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2488848.ece